천사 안젤라

This is a sad little fairy tale about a little girl named Angela who has a hunchback. Angela's mother always tells her how beautiful she is, but after her mother dies of a sudden illness, her father sends her to live with a relative, who talks cruelly about Angela's appearance. The once happy and lively girl becomes sick with sorrow. An angel offers to take her to heaven, and Angela's hunchback transforms into a pair of wings, allowing her to fly to heaven to join her mother.

It reminded me of The Little Match Girl, and apparently it's based on another European fairy tale. The author includes an explanation at the end of the story as of how their version of the story came about: after being moved by a retelling by a poet they admire, they thought a lot about how the story could explore attitudes towards disability, and shared the story with others many times over the years, and eventually their story became a book.

I think the story does well in showing that Angela's happiness isn't affected by her appearance or disability, but by the way she is treated by others. However, I think the image of her hunchback transforming into wings is potentially problematic - often the "happy ending" for disabled characters is for their disability to disappear, when the problem isn't the disability itself, but people's attitudes towards disability and disabled people. Although Angela's hunchback becoming wings could be viewed as a metaphor for her disability becoming her strength, it is undermined by the fact she doesn't have her hunchback anymore, and is effectively "cured".

Language-wise, this is a short, simple children's story, without any noticible difficulties, which makes it suitable for beginners.